Hannah W. Wong is a specialist in twentieth-century art history of the United States and Europe and completed her dissertation, A “Funny Guy” Comes to America: Humor, Sex, Machines, and the Viewer in the Work of Francis Picabia, 1913-1918, at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work considers how humor operates in art and visual culture. She is also interested in artistic friendship and collaboration as found in artists' correspondence and personal journals.
Additionally, she has pursued topics in paper and paintings conservation. This resulted in two recent projects: an article for the American Art journal and a conservation symposium examining Old Master paintings.
Her other areas of expertise include visual and literary depictions of women in modern America, particularly in posters and serials published during WWII, and modern American religious history. Her studies in art history and religion intersected with a National Gallery of Art travel fellowship visiting SE Asian pilgrimage sites and a paper on Francis Picabia's Dada watercolor depicting an inksplattered Christ.
View Hannah's Curriculum Vitae
Publications
“POWERING PORTRAITURE: FRANCIS PICABIA’S 291 MECHANOMORPHS REVIVED”
American Art Journal, 29.3 (Fall 2015), 118-131. (Peer reviewed).
Francis Picabia’s mechanomorphic portrait series from 1915 ranks among the French modern artist’s most important collaborations with his American colleagues. Published in the July–August 1915 issue of the avant-garde art journal 291, Picabia’s portraits depict the Alfred Stieglitz circle as mechanical devices waiting attentively for a source of power. This essay examines the role of the reader as one source...
Chronology, Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture.
Ed. Anne C. Goodyear and James W. McManus. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009. 300-307.
This illustrated chronology tracks portraiture of and by artist Marcel Duchamp between his birth in 1887 and the date of the 2009 exhibition and sets these works within relevant historical and biographical contexts.
Forthcoming
2015
2010
Exhibition review, “The Art of Propaganda Shown in Situ: State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda in Washington DC’s Holocaust Memorial Museum.” On Paper: The Journal of the Washington Print Club [formerly: The Washington Print Club Quarterly], 46.3 (Fall 2010), 11-13.
2009
Chronology, Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture. Ed. Anne C. Goodyear and James W. McManus. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009. 300-307.
2007
Exhibition review, Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Over the Top: American Posters from World War I. On Paper: The Journal of the Washington Print Club [formerly: The Washington Print Club Quarterly], 43.4 (Winter 2007-08), 9-11.
2005
1999
Sample long-position paper, “Play Like a Girl: Increasing Gender Equality in Sports” published in The Elements of Legal Prose. Norma Procopiow. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. 182-189.
1997
Lectures, Conference Sessions and Symposia
2019
Workshop consultant: Archives of American Art’s Workshop Series: Teaching the History of American Art with Primary Sources, Washington, DC, Sept. 26-28
Lecturer: Blanton Museum of Art Summer Lecture Series, Austin, TX, April 17-20.
Surrealism 101 (May 3); Contraband or Compliment?: Some Issues Around “Copying” in Contemporary Art (May 31); How Looking at Art Can Make You a Better Communicator (June 29); Jeffrey Gibson in Context (July 13)
Paper: “Sideshow Acts and Queasy Invitations: Ironic Titles in the Works of Francis Picabia and Kara Walker”. Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, Washington, DC, April 17-20
Workshop Organizer: “Writing Your Dissertation”. College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, NY, Feb. 14.
2018
Roundtable Organizer: “Making the Most of Contingent Faculty Positions”. College Art Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA, Feb. 23
2017
Participant: Francis Picabia Scholars’ Evening, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Feb. 15, in relation to Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction Exhibition.
Gallery Lecture: “Humor in the Work of Nina Katchadourian,” Nina Katchadourian: Curiouser Exhibition, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, April 13.
2016
2012
Paper: “291 in 291: Francis Picabia’s Portraits of the Alfred Stieglitz Circle.” Smithsonian Fellows Lectures in American Art, Washington, DC, April.
Paper: “‘It is I Who Appears In This Portrait’: Francis Picabia’s Mechanomorphic Portraiture and the Body as Material Culture Object.” Accepted for “Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia – Challenging the Identity and Function of the Object within its Environmental and Cultural Context.” Conference of Space Between Society: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, Providence, Rhode Island, June.
2011
Lecture: “Stranger Things Have Happened: Jack Strange and Humor in Contemporary Art.” Visual Studies Series at the Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas.
2010
Paper: “Females Under Fire: Depictions of Women and Violence in Francis Picabia’s Voilà elle and Other New York Work.” Accepted for “Pictures that Pack a Punch: Violence in American Art, 1780-1917.” College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois.
2009
Paper: “Portrait of a Lady: Humor and Francis Picabia’s Mechanomorphic Object Portrait of a ‘Jeune fille américaine.’” Accepted in “Beyond Likeness: Propositional Statements—Displacing/Replacing the Recognized Capacity of Portraits to Represent.” Meeting for Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Atlanta, Georgia.
2007
Paper: “Killing Dada: The Role of the Crucified Christ in Francis Picabia’s Wing.” University of Maryland representative for the Middle Atlantic Symposium, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
2006
Graduate student response to “Eve Hesse: Allowing an Abstract Momento-Mori” paper. Art History & Archaeology Undergraduate Symposium, UM.
2005
Lecture: “Every Day Confessions of a Beginning Curator,” Curator’s Lecture, Union Gallery, UM.